Making sense of this crazy world
I am a student of history, a teacher of history and a writer of history. You could say history is a passion of mine. I have a website for students and I had been mulling around this idea of a podcast for some time. Would people be interested? Would I make it interesting? That’s essentially what was holding me back. But with a new year starting, the craziness still all around us, I thought what the hell – give it a go, John! The primary purpose of the podcast is to use history to help us make a little more sense of this crazy world we are living in. I aim to do this by using history. It’s not the only tool to be used, but it is my chosen tool. Everything happens in a context and that context is recent history. But that recent history is almost always the result of older history. We have to go back into our past to understand today. I could easily rattle off a hundred other aims but trust me, they will be introduced as we go along. But there are two other aims I must own up to straight away. The first is that I really want to lay it on the line that history is always about people. I think it was the great historian, Eric Hobsbawm who said unemployment is an economic statistic but a human experience. And you can’t appear to be further away from people than with dry statistics – but you’re not. And the second is that there is always more than one story to tell; more than one “truth”. History is an interpretation of the past, nothing more. There are always other interpretations. When we look at this crazy world of ours today and try to make sense of what is happening, it is so important to bear that in mind - someone else thinks differently. And if we don’t understand that other interpretation, if we don’t even know it exists, then we can’t reach an understanding of what is happening. And our truth is less secure! I hope that makes sense.
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Episodes
21 hours ago
21 hours ago
Having looked at the English Revolution, the civil war and its aftermath, this week I’m going to look at the political thinking that came in its aftermath. It shows the depth at which people were thinking about the business of governing in the seventeenth century and, in line with the purpose of this humble podcast, its had a profound impact on our world today. So, it's going to worth our time.
Sunday Jan 04, 2026
Sunday Jan 04, 2026
In a nutshell, England had been governed for eleven years, from 1629 to 1640, without a Parliament; for another eleven years, from 1649 to 1660, it would be governed without a monarchy. England, and by default, Britain had sorted out a democratic future for itself slap bang in the middle of the seventeenth century. Only to regret what it had done and bring the monarchy back. But of course, there was more to it than that, and that’s what we’re about to have a look at.
Sunday Dec 28, 2025
Sunday Dec 28, 2025
Last week I looked at what led England to civil war. This week I’m going to focus on how things on the Parliamentary side of that civil war really radicalised.
Sunday Dec 21, 2025
Sunday Dec 21, 2025
The English Revolution, that took place in England in the seventeenth century, is often overlooked. But it’s important in establishing the principle of parliamentary democracy and so, it’s certainly worth our time taking a look at it. And it was a revolution, even if that’s something we English are not famous for: not only did a king lose his head but the monarchy itself was overthrown and with it the established Church and the House of Lords. And not only was Parliament pitted against absolutism, but some incredibly radical ideas emerged in the wake of this initial shock, radical even in today’s terms, like the levelling of society.
Sunday Dec 14, 2025
Sunday Dec 14, 2025
Covering more than a thousand years of history, my focus will be on power and how it set up the conditions that led to the English and French revolutions as well as influencing the American revolution too. I
Sunday Dec 07, 2025
Sunday Dec 07, 2025
If we look carefully at it, ancient Rome stands in contrast to Greece because whereas we can say that Greece, for a period of time, was indeed a democracy, Rome wrapped a democratic cloak around itself, but in fact was an oligarchy of the wealthy. And for us today, we need to be aware that it is the Roman republic that has had a greater influence on the democracies of the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and their constitutions, than Athens had.
Sunday Nov 30, 2025
Sunday Nov 30, 2025
George Bernard Shaw said that democracy is the form of government that gives its citizens what they deserve. And that's where I want to turn my attention to: the way in which we are governed in democracies (probably with diversions to alternative ways of governing). Where has democracy come from? What lessons does the past have for us today? What do we mean by democracy? Should we be satisfied with what we’ve got? If democracy is important to us, it seems worth the journey.
Sunday Nov 23, 2025
Sunday Nov 23, 2025
Having taken us from America in the 1920s to America today, last week I looked at the state of the capitalist system and the state of the richest 0.1%, 1%, 10%. Well, today, I’m going to end our look at America by focussing on the 90%, right up to Trump's current administration.
Sunday Nov 16, 2025
Sunday Nov 16, 2025
Having made the link between the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession of 2009, in other words between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Financial Crisis or Subprime Crisis of 2008, let’s take a look at how the capitalist system works in America today.
Sunday Nov 09, 2025
Sunday Nov 09, 2025
In this episode I’m going to make the worrying link between the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Financial Crisis or Subprime Crisis of 2008, between the Great Depression of the early 1930s and the Great Recession of 2009.